A general map of Chief Joseph’s flight.
Several days later the Nez Percé were trailing up the Madison River within the Park. They were strangers in Yellowstone and the most unwelcome tourists it has ever known. Within this identical week Secretary of War William T. Sherman and an escort of five concluded a tour and left for Fort Ellis. They did not see “any signs of Indians, and felt at no moment more sense of danger than we do here.”[195] A few days later they were cognizant of their lucky break. Near Madison Junction the Nez Percé met a prospector named Shively whom they pressed into service as a guide. A few days later they seized another miner named Irwin, and held him for a while.
The Radersburg Tourists
The Nez Percé spent the night of August 23 in camp on the banks of the Firehole River, above the narrows. At daybreak the next morning several Indians appeared in the camp of some tourists from Radersburg, Montana. The personnel of this party were Mr. and Mrs. George F. Cowan; Mrs. Cowan’s brother and sister, Frank and Ida Carpenter; Charles Mann; William Dingee; Albert Oldham; A. J. Arnold; and Henry Myers. A prospector, named Harmon, was also associated with the Cowan party at this time.
These people were just preparing to break up the “home” camp located at this terminus of the wagon road. For the past week they had been enjoying themselves on horseback visits to the geyser basins, and several of them had been to the lake and canyon.
Dingee asked the Indians, “What are you?” “Snake Injun,” one replied. Later they admitted they were Nez Percé and made a demand for coffee and bacon. Cowan refused to give them any, and as one who called himself “Charley” attempted to give a signal the stern Cowan peremptorily ordered him to “keep hands down!” Right there a special resentment was engendered toward the “older man.” Frank Carpenter asked them if any harm was in store for the party. The spokesman said, “Don’t know, maybe so.” He gave them to understand that since the Big Hole Battle the Nez Percé were double-minded toward the white man.[196]
The worried little party held a hasty consultation, and in view of their limited arms and ammunition they decided, with serious misgivings, to make an appeal to the chiefs for their deliverance.
They, therefore, hooked up the team, saddled their horses, and joined the Indian caravan, which turned eastward and journeyed up Nez Percé Creek. After proceeding a couple of miles the wagon was abandoned, its contents rifled, and the spokes knocked out for whip handles. By midday the Radersburg case had come to the attention of the chiefs. A council was held at the base of Mary Mountain in which it was decided that the tourists were to be liberated. Poker Joe spoke for the chiefs:
Some of our people knew Mrs. Cowan and her sister at Spokane House. The soldiers killed many Nez Percé women and children on the Big Hole. But we do not hurt Montana people. You may go. Take old horses and do not spy.[197]